Official State of the Game Podcast Thread - Page 1950

On December 15 2011 03:37 Liquid`Tyler wrote:

i dont know what punishing naniwa by revoking the code S spot he earned accomplishes that couldn't be accomplished in any other way.

i have already discussed this issue with a lot of knowledgeable and experienced people and one of the points that is pretty much universally agreed upon is that the organization running the competition is in the best position to prevent this from happening. they prevent it from happening by removing any possibility for inconsequential games and by making sure players know in advance that they will be required to try their hardest in every match in order to participate in their event. the most effective way of preventing it is certainly not making an example out of the guy who did it ignorantly. no one has ever suggested that.

gomtv decides to act on a very vague rule with a very severe punishment, why? naniwa's offense was not clearly defined going into the tournament and there was no hint at what the punishment would be at all. i can't read the original korean, so i can't speak with complete confidence, but it seems to me like the application of the rule they cite is quite a stretch based on the translation. and they just make up a punishment when someone breaks it. they're very far removed from proper and effective use of a system of rules and penalties. they certainly were not compelled by their own rules to do what they did. so using this rule is an excuse to punish him.

what this move accomplishes business-wise is to make everyone working with them fear them. if you do anything that they don't expect, anything that they weren't clear on or didn't bring up at all, and it works against them, then you should expect a very severe response from them. even if they set you up to do something that's bad for them, they'll still not say anything beforehand and if you go ahead and do something that's bad for them, they retaliate harshly.

imo the standard good business philosophy is to cover your ass as much as possible. and when a business fails to do so, it minimizes damages and learns and fixes the problem for the future. if you are the big kid on the block and you wanna be a bully, then yeah you can be careless and when something goes wrong, don't admit fault and then slap the other guy down and make everyone hate him. if they really think that's optimal, then i'll admit that i don't know everything they know about their own business, so i can't press that too hard. all i can say is it's very improbable that that is optimal. and even if it is optimal for their own business, it's not optimal for the industry. so even if you do want to shield them with "they're just doing what they think is best for their business" i still lose 3 respect points for them.

if they owned up to their mistake and stood by naniwa, then i think this is a situation where it's quite possible to use propaganda (not in an evil deceptive way, but legitimate propaganda to get the masses to understand your decision and agree with it) to make themselves look good, make naniwa look good (which they want because he's in their league and he's one of the few foreigners, extra valuable to them) and make their league look stronger than ever heading into the new year. but no, they're apparently incapable of that (either because of incompetence or emotions).

edit: apparently the conduct rule wasnt used in the official explanation. if that's true, then it's even worse. they went from having a rule that, when stretched, barely is reasonable, to having no rule and just a spontaneous penalty.

On December 15 2011 10:53 Greenworld wrote:
Well the most intresting fact about this is ... ok Naniwa did a stupid thing but hey didn't Idra decided not to play a game versus someone at the last MLG ? Now Idra takes his place ...

On December 15 2011 09:26 Tektos wrote:


Because the match in which he did it was not a GSL match maybe?

On December 15 2011 11:04 Hopelessnoob wrote:

Those were useless matches to determine ranksing, all it could was determine who had slightly more money... NaNi's was... oh wait

On December 15 2011 09:23 fumo wrote:


chill out, It was a drunk episode so you can't take it seriously
and she was there because she was mentioned in the discussion before and also because every show host likes to generate some drama/controversy

On December 15 2011 11:06 Xcobidoo wrote:

ESV weekly thingy is a qualifier for a code A spot, so if SlayerS had not taken it in their own hands, GOm surely would have.

On December 15 2011 03:37 Liquid`Tyler wrote:

i dont know what punishing naniwa by revoking the code S spot he earned accomplishes that couldn't be accomplished in any other way.

i have already discussed this issue with a lot of knowledgeable and experienced people and one of the points that is pretty much universally agreed upon is that the organization running the competition is in the best position to prevent this from happening. they prevent it from happening by removing any possibility for inconsequential games and by making sure players know in advance that they will be required to try their hardest in every match in order to participate in their event. the most effective way of preventing it is certainly not making an example out of the guy who did it ignorantly. no one has ever suggested that.

gomtv decides to act on a very vague rule with a very severe punishment, why? naniwa's offense was not clearly defined going into the tournament and there was no hint at what the punishment would be at all. i can't read the original korean, so i can't speak with complete confidence, but it seems to me like the application of the rule they cite is quite a stretch based on the translation. and they just make up a punishment when someone breaks it. they're very far removed from proper and effective use of a system of rules and penalties. they certainly were not compelled by their own rules to do what they did. so using this rule is an excuse to punish him.

what this move accomplishes business-wise is to make everyone working with them fear them. if you do anything that they don't expect, anything that they weren't clear on or didn't bring up at all, and it works against them, then you should expect a very severe response from them. even if they set you up to do something that's bad for them, they'll still not say anything beforehand and if you go ahead and do something that's bad for them, they retaliate harshly.

imo the standard good business philosophy is to cover your ass as much as possible. and when a business fails to do so, it minimizes damages and learns and fixes the problem for the future. if you are the big kid on the block and you wanna be a bully, then yeah you can be careless and when something goes wrong, don't admit fault and then slap the other guy down and make everyone hate him. if they really think that's optimal, then i'll admit that i don't know everything they know about their own business, so i can't press that too hard. all i can say is it's very improbable that that is optimal. and even if it is optimal for their own business, it's not optimal for the industry. so even if you do want to shield them with "they're just doing what they think is best for their business" i still lose 3 respect points for them.

if they owned up to their mistake and stood by naniwa, then i think this is a situation where it's quite possible to use propaganda (not in an evil deceptive way, but legitimate propaganda to get the masses to understand your decision and agree with it) to make themselves look good, make naniwa look good (which they want because he's in their league and he's one of the few foreigners, extra valuable to them) and make their league look stronger than ever heading into the new year. but no, they're apparently incapable of that (either because of incompetence or emotions).

edit: apparently the conduct rule wasnt used in the official explanation. if that's true, then it's even worse. they went from having a rule that, when stretched, barely is reasonable, to having no rule and just a spontaneous penalty.

On December 15 2011 11:40 Russano wrote:
All the other crap aside,I'm really disturrbed at the precedent set by GOMTV. This feels like the very first instance of a tournament stepping in and restricting the actual freedom of the player, to play the game how he wants once the game has started. I strongly believe that when the game starts all the freedom should entirely rest with the player. This is the first time anyone has ever stepped in and deliberately said an actual game action or strategy could not be used, and I'm not at all okay with that. I'd be interested to hear what other progamers think about this point, which really never seemed to be mentioned.

On December 15 2011 11:48 W2 wrote:


Not the first time. Coca/Byun incident, game was started and Coca chose to leave, thinking he had the freedom to do so. It would have been confusing and less controversial if he had not discussed with Byun, however the dialog showed that Coca had the intention to throw the game, thus the verdict was made. Similar to how Naniwa claimed on twitter he was not trying and intended to throw the match, plus the fact that he had his hands off the keyboard after the 1a, shows that it was pre-meditated.

On December 15 2011 12:10 Russano wrote:



That's a different argument. That's teh argument on whether or not someone should be allowed to forfeit a match. What happens now is that nobody in a GSL touranement is allowed to worker rush. I believe that right should be completely protected based on principle disreguarding how insignificant it is. If I want to start my game by triple expanding, I should be allowed to do that. Sure if anyone decideds to attack ever with anything, in the first 10 minutes, I'm totally boned. But I should be allowed to do whatever I want with my play.

On December 15 2011 12:21 W2 wrote:


Yeah, but part of it is also due to Naniwa claiming on twitter he wasn't trying, and him not having his hands on the keyboard during the game.

On December 15 2011 11:07 WardenSC wrote:


Idra's placement matches were not televised. Thus no one really cared whether he won/lost. Naniwa's match was. Do you guys need baby-spoonfeeding? Apply yourself, figure it out.